Georgette Braun: Pocketbook cash carries a nostalgic feel

Sunday

Jun 29, 2014 at 4:00 PM

On the way to visit friends in New Mexico before our now-grown kids were born, my then-husband and I got sidetracked in Oklahoma by tornado weather.

We actually climbed under a road viaduct to seek shelter, which we later learned was a bad idea. But being stressed out by the storm, getting drenched by the rain and dirty from the soil wasn’t the worst of it.

We had practically all of our money in traveler’s checks and had eaten only a light breakfast all day. The severe weather caused us to stop in the next-closest town for the night, only to find that power was out. Convenience stores near the hotel couldn’t open their cash registers to give us change for our traveler’s check. So we scrounged around in the car and found enough change to buy a small package of little doughnuts.

That’s when I vowed to keep more than doughnut money in my purse at all times.

Though I advocate having a bit of cash on hand, I got jittery when I sold my SUV this month to a private party. The guy who came to see it on a Sunday wanted to give me cash that day. Thousands and thousands of dollars.

Who would carry that amount of money, even for a few miles? I wondered, incredulously. But more importantly, I asked, “What if you’re a counterfeiter?” We met at my bank on Monday to deposit the money in my account. It wasn’t fake.

A few days later I learned others were likewise aghast about carrying a lot of cash when rapper 50 Cent pulled $10,000 out of his pocket on “Watch What Happens Live.” A viewer of the late-night Bravo show called in to ask how much money he had in his pocket. “Jaws dropped across the Twitterverse,” an AOL.com story said.

A peek into wallets by Bankrate’s May Financial Security Index shows most of you are more like me than 50 Cent: 40 percent of those surveyed carry less than $20 in cash on a daily basis; 2 percent carry more than $250.

Tom Walsh, president and CEO of Northwest Bank of Rockford, confirmed what we all know: that people are carrying less cash today, and the main reason is the increased use of debit and credit cards.

Yet the degree to which we use debit and credit cards instead of greenbacks can be a generational thing, he said. “I have a 22-year-old son, and if he has $5 in his wallet, I am surprised. Young people are more interested in using plastic.”

Using debit and credit cards can help consumers keep better track of where they’re spending their money, said Heidi Berardi, director of education and community outreach for Rockford-based Family Credit Management. And if you’re able to pay off credit cards at the end of the month, the points you earn for charges can be used toward purchases, even putting you ahead of the game, she said.

On the other hand, cash sometimes has a way of disappearing. “If we have cash, we will spend it like there is a hole in our pocket,” Berardi said.